There are some people who hold to an old view of history: that it is driven by "Great Men". Of Kings, Prophets and Warriors shape the world. Of heroes and their struggle. Such views while they have some charge due to romanticism are overly simplistic and childish.

Social issues, economic realities, administrative capacities, environmental factors and the march of technology and science (a process done by numerous artisans, engineers and scientists bit by bit as they refine and build upon what others set out before them) all have a much greater effect on history. The introduction of the Potato to the Old World, an act done casually by Spanish sailors who sold off surplus rations after returning from the new world for a little extra cash led to a considerable increase of the population of Europe which lead to the Industrial Revolution.

>>266776The significance of Napoleon Bonaparte pales in comparison to the development of machined interchangeable parts developed in the 19th century first attempted by Eli Whitney and latter put to practical use by the Federal Armories.>>266807Great inventions are generally the result of considerable experimentation and refinement. James Watt did not invent the steam engine, he invented the Watt steam engine. Before him there was the Newcommon Engine used to pump water out of mines and the Aeolipile before that. There were other people looking into steam engines at the time such as Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot. Moreover while the Watt steam engine worked and played some role, it was soon superseded by more powerful, efficient and safe designs.

everyone wants to ruin everything. given power over it, most people will cause the destruction of anything precious and useful. except heroes. they have an ability to tolerate one or two useful things. not all of them get recognized as such and not all who get recognized are heroes, but mostly they're doing the same as anyone else, just without ruining everything useful they have before starting.

this useful thing gone unruined increases human agency until the point where it is so increased someone has the power to ruin it. this is 'progress'.

>>266967But marixsm is one of the ideologies more prone to cult of personality to ever exist? They reject traditional heros, but that's because they have a mythology of their own. Nothing to do with rigurous historiographical work and the nuancing of super hero tales.

Though I agree that some people here overreacts too much against outstanding historical characters and pop history in general.

>>266885And in the end it meant that some people got killed, the imaginary lines on the map drawn by monkeys changed around a bit and the surviving peasants and artisans had to pay taxes to another set of assholes. Their Games of Thrones are nothing more than children squabbling over pennies.

In contrast new technologies, from printing to gunpowder to improve metallurgy to ocean going ships change the nature of the game: how wars are fought, what is profitable and what is not, how countries operate and how people live their lives.

>>267098Technological progress is a step by step process, building on what came before which was built on what came before that. New technologies become possible and practical when refinements in other fields make it so. Revolvers existed since the 1500s at least, but only became practical in the 19th century due to breakthroughs in machining. At the same time there are often multiple people working on the same basic idea at once. The "great man" who manages to get his version complete was most likely just in the right place at the right time while his rivals had setbacks.

This discussion is so goddamn pointlessObviously neither is right, one is dependant on the other. Without social development, certain circumstances that may give rise to the 'great' man will never happen, on the other hand it's redicolous to argue that history is entirely independant of certain personalities and and 'someone else would've filled the exact same role with the exact same consequences'.Take for example the crusades: Without Urban II. it's unlikely that a pope would've called for such drastic measures but without the slight overpopulation in Europe (2nd born unlanded sons etc.) noone would've picked up the calls.

>>267351The crusades achieved little in the long run, they further destabilized an unstable reason and propped up the Byzantine Empire for a bit before smashing what was left of it to ensure it's eventual conquest.

>>267347Not exactly. It would have taken the spread of certain cultural elements, and the individuals with knowledge on how to effectively use gunpowder with which to use it. The Chinese invented gunpowder years before Europe got it, yet they stalled in terms of progress for quite awhile, while Europeans skyrocketed forward unto their world pedestal.

>>267292>That Hellenization was not something that changed the world?Hellenization is grossly overstated. People latch onto any anecdote of greek-like activity in central asia as proof of it being a huge thing, but where is any of that influence today? Even areas that had greek culture prior to Alexander's birth, like Anatolia, are no longer greek today.

Perhaps he made large changes, but they've all been swept away by the march of history, leaving nothing but the occasional greek coin in Afghanistan.

>>267393His advancement is western civilization itself. He laid the cornerstone of a society which would shape world events for what could be thousands of years. He spread, and allowed the explosion of thinkers, artist, and other great man, which would build on his cornerstone, the cornerstone of the great man .

>>267411>Said specifically in my post that Europe GOT it.Reading comprehension. Should not, by your line of reasoning, gunpowder was more advanced towards the source as it slowly trekked across the world? If history is the literal building off of societies, why were the Chinese not at the forefront of technologies of the sort? They used coal, gunpowder, and other devices years before the Europeans caught on. What is your explanation for such a change?

>>267393If you truly believe in this materialist mumbo jumbo, then his impact on the broader culture, economy and politics of the region would carry on to it's next 'states'.That is, you're trying to mininze his inpact to fit your narrative, while advocating that the exact same kind of changes he (and others) made are the most important.

>>267426>why were the Chinese not at the forefront of technology? >describes how the Chinese were at the forefront of technology

Also re: great man:"[Y]ou must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown.... Before he can remake his society, his society must make him."It hasn't been a thing since 1860

>>267426The problems which occured in China which resulted in technological stagnation through the late Ming and Qing Dynasties are the result of social issues which deterred Chinese interest in physical scientists, maritime developments and exploration.

>>267434By spreading the seeds of his culture. His march sowed the grounds of those societies to ferment great thinkers, writers, scientist, and generals, to be harvested for years. Even to this day, we look back at the Romans and Greeks as a source of inspiration for modern society.

>>267441>If you truly believe in this materialist mumbo jumboI don't and seeing how that was my first post in the thread, it looks like you're just trying to apply that label to everyone who disagrees with you.

>>267442I never doubted that great men were a thing of their time, but you cannot deny, by making that accusation, that great men shape their time. One must take their society and use it to build off of it, it does not do so naturally by itself.

>>267434Answer me quickly. Had the romans chosen a more apt man that Quintilius for their german funhouse of fun, that is perhaps a man who didn't fall for Arminius' bs and actually beat the Germanics, would the world be much different?

>muh autism lines>geopolitics don't impact culture, economy, and by recursion future geopolitics>hurr durr military conquests never brought any changes>hurr durr all great men ever did was military conquests>introducing new ideas, inventions and organization schemes is all liiiieees>all scholars are ultimately meaningless too>everyone is meaningless because I'm meaningless, if I'm shit nobody can be not-shit!

>>267465I never denied that society had a way in which to shape great men. Great men are borne from great societies. These men then go on to shape their society themselves. It's a check and balance game, it is not completely once sided one way or the other.

>>267483Who the fuck are these materialist non-marxists? Marx literally started materialism. I have absolutely no idea how you can be a materialist and not a Marxist. What the fuck are you talking about? The entire historical profession ditched the great man theory nearly 150 years ago. You're talking entirely out of your ass.

>>267361Yeah lad people travalling thousands of miles to their potential deaths because of 'Muh faith' is much more likely. People only ever do shit when they can gain from itor when there's no alternative.

>>267371Could've taken any other example. To take Alexander as an example: He wouldn't have conquered shit if his father didn't leave him his army, and said army wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for good agriculture etc. Not even denying that certain man have great impact on history but either extremes of this debate are pants on head retarded.

>>267470>They must have had a source, and if they are the result of warlords, or court officials, does that not reflect the turning of history by men?Men, plural. Not the product of one mastermind but of general attitudes common among the ruling classes of china at the time.

>>267486I was actually partially replying to an earlier post which I forgot to link kek">>266885 #And in the end it meant that some people got killed, the imaginary lines on the map drawn by monkeys changed around a bit and the surviving peasants and artisans had to pay taxes to another set of assholes. "

If Akechi Mitsuhide didn't kill Nobunaga, Japan would have developed much sooner and would succeed at conquering a large chunk of Asia. World history would be vastly different with China being ruled from a strong Japan since the 1600's and with a vast amount of cultural interchange between the East and the West.

As it turns out, Nobunaga died and the eventual conqueror of Japan isolated it from the rest of the world.

We're talking about great man theory, but you cited a non-great man. Like, if one guy had been another guy, maybe history would've been much different. If some runner had run a little faster or a little slower, some general might've achieved a stunning victory, or failed to do so.

History is filled with billions of little 'what ifs' like that. That's not Great Man theory, though.

Since you're drunk, try this one out:

A butterfly beating its wings doesn't just cause a hurricane. That hurricane changes weather patterns, subtly altering biological processes. Different sperm start reaching different eggs and soon, an entire different generation of humans is born compared with OTL.

>>267508>Yeah lad people travalling thousands of miles to their potential deaths because of 'Muh faith' is much more likely. People only ever do shit when they can gain from itor when there's no alternative.

Most of the Crusaders were not 2nd sons, but nobles. This is well documented.

The Crusaders didn't have the same kind of culture and mindset as yours. The Crusades were very expensive and unprofitable. Not to mention dangerous. If Crusaders wanted to get more monetary gain, there were better targets closer to them.

>>267541What?>great men refers only to the grandestActually it is the belief that individuals actions can change history and are worthy of study.It doesn't mean just Napoleon, it includes the little guys too, well little great men. Meanwhile materialism only thinks of it in a nearly deterministic term where everything is defined by our means of production and the actions of individuals are essenrially worthless. Humans only act as parts of a group/class. Muh individualist bourgeois is bad mmkay.

Saying that Quintilius, or Augustus, even if on different scales, did not impact history be it through their failures or successes... Is bullshit.

>>266751Alexander was an innovator in the area of logistics. Meaning, he didn't bother conquering cities that would cost too many resources, and focused on ones that would be easy to get supplies to. And how many military leaders up until present have been influenced by him?

I'm not saying that learning about how many bushels of grain each province of a country produced in a year or how high the tariffs on cheese were is irrelevant, but it's interesting to read about the great men of history as well.

The lingua franca of the Levant used to be Greek thanks to Alexander, Jesus likely spoke Greek (albeit not as first language) and the early texts we have of the New Testament are in Greek. So, hellenization was determinant for the most popular religion in the world to be what it is.

>>267563>>267541Oh and I'm not saying we need to focus on great men.We shouldn't just be autists talking about butterflies, but we shouldn't just be autists talking about economical models either. In the end if you accept that a singular model will be the cause for every single event you study, then you'll make a field of bullshit.

>>267544People here like Paradox Games.Every playable character in CK2 is more or less one of the greatest magnates of Europe at the time.

If you compare the main Crusaders, with CK2...

The Crusader leaders of the First Crusade were the Count of Flanders (in game, the Duke of Flanders), the Duke of Normandy, the Count of Toulose (in game, the Duke of Toulouse), the Count of Blois (in game, the Duke of Champagne), the Duke of Lower Lorraine, the Count of Vermandois and the Count of Taranto.

>>267544>2nd sons, but noblesThat's exactly what I mean, 2nd sons of nobles that wouldn't get land and are thus encouraged to get it elsewhere.>The Crusades were very expensive and unprofitable. Not to mention dangerous. If Crusaders wanted to get more monetary gainI get that they have a different mindset than we have now and I admit that faith definitly played a roll but no fuckig way you spend loads of money and travel hundreds of miles to your potential death (as we both agree) only to be promised a place in heaven. You do it because of spititual AND monetary gains.

>>267563"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or — this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms — with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production."

>>267603>That's exactly what I mean, 2nd sons of nobles that wouldn't get land and are thus encouraged to get it elsewhere.

No, it was the really powerful nobles that went to Crusade. The Count of Flanders was the richest man on France, maybe of all Europe. The Count of Toulouse was likely the 3rd richest man on France.

>I get that they have a different mindset than we have now and I admit that faith definitly played a roll but no fuckig way you spend loads of money and travel hundreds of miles to your potential death (as we both agree) only to be promised a place in heaven. You do it because of spititual AND monetary gains.

Do you know why the Crusades eventually fell? Because most of the Crusaders decided to go back to Europe after conquering whatever they wanted to conquer. They knew how hard it would be.

The father of the first Habsburg King of Germany died this way (but in a Crusade in Spain, iirc). He basically sold a lot of his possessions, said his farewells and literally went to fight to his death. He also told his son to not be very ambitious and to be a good Christian, content with life, before going to his Crusade. His son, obviously did not listen to him and conquered a lot of lands in Europe.

>>267522>Both of you are arguing from the same side.Don't think so hard about what individual anons might be thinking behind their keyboard. Reply to what people write in their posts. If that's insufficient, say "X theory is wrong and Y theory is right" rather than attributing beliefs to posters you can't even identify.

>>266751>There are some people who hold to an old view of history: that it is driven by "Great Men".No historian holds that view. It's like reducing music to people like Michael Jackson and The Beatles. Influential and symbolic, sure, but nobody who gets serious about music and its history will think in those terms.

Actually, the famine was largely man made. Potatoes were the only crop that wasn't considered worth exporting. Ireland was a net exporter of food crops during the famine. The British demanded that export contracts be fulfilled at all costs. This left nothing for the domestic market when the potato crop failed.

Many times I have heard people say, "why didn't the Irish grow things other than potatoes?" The answer is they did indeed grow other crops, they just weren't allowed to eat them.

It's not even that, wheels have AXLES. That's what made them an improvement over roller logs, which you had to cycle from back to front. Then even with the roller log, that requires placing several cylindrical objects next to each other, and putting a flat object on top.

>>266751Italy only got involved in World War II out of the decision of a singular man - Benito Mussolini, who waited until France was on the ropes before declaring war in the hopes of grabbing a few colonies quickly. In his own words, "I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the table as a man who has fought."

That's it. Mussolini's own advisors were telling him that Italy would not be ready for a general European war until 1943 at the earliest, but he chose to go in three years early anyway.

Remove this decision - have Mussolini remain neutral - and WWII massively changes. Suddenly there is no African front nor Balkans front. Germany does not bleed men and materiel into supporting the Italians. Thousands of more planes, tanks, trucks, and men are available for the German invasion of Russia. On the other side of things, a neutral Italy means that Britain does not need to waste a large portion of its own fleet on contesting the Mediterranean against the Regia Marina. Britain now has dozens more ships available for the Battle of the Atlantic, and even now has ships to spare to contest the Japanese better in the Pacific if/when they start things up.

>>266885With regard to Akechi Mitsuhide, I don't know. Nobunaga is often presented as an iconoclast but I don't think he really was one. He was just a more successful Sengoku daimyo than his rivals. The real iconoclasts would have been Christian daimyo or the Ikko (and even the Ikko are more conservative than many people realize). Mitsuhide killing Nobunaga did not seem to change all that much, imo. Hideyoshi simply built upon the foundation that Nobunaga laid and finished the job. Many of the things that Nobunaga would have done, Hideyoshi actually did do, like invading Shikoku.

I also question whether it would have been much different if another samurai clan (aside from the Oda/toyotomi) united Japan.

Hideyoshi had to unify the land by building a confederation and allying with the tozama. Nobunaga probably would have just destroyed the tozama and put his cronies in power over their fallen houses.

But is that really a big difference? Like somebody else said, that just changes who the monkey powerholders are and makes little difference for the majority of people or for how the society functions. I don't think that what Hideyoshi did is very different from what Nobunaga would have done, so I am not sure if Akechi Mitsuhide really greatly affected the net outcome of history. He just killed one notable leader to be replaced by somebody else.

Actually, I wonder if you could make a similar argument with Alexander the Great's father. I think he was assassinated as well. Did that make a huge dent in history or would Philip be able to accomplish his son'ss feats seeing as he was also a very accomplished general?

>>266864(In response to your first point) but how does the significance of the one thing diminish the significance of the other? The claim was that without Napoleon, the world wouldn't be the same, and your rebuttal is that another thing changed the world more. That does not refute the original claim.

Other than "Conquer Japan and then conquer China", Nobunaga and Hideyoshi were not very much alike in terms of policy. And Nobunaga would probably be more successful in the "conquer China" part than Hideyoshi.

He also had a strong heir in Nobutada, that was also killed by Mitsuhide.

I think it's very plausible that great men made more of an impact in smaller and simpler times and that their influence has declined very sharply and very recently as the scale and scope of human operations exceeded the reach of individual minds.

>>273540> And Nobunaga would probably be more successful in the "conquer China" part than Hideyoshi.Pretty sure this. Nobunaga was a better conqueror, although not so great at politics. Hideyoshi was either batshit insane at the time of the invasion of the continent, or he was intentionally sending people to their deaths.

>>273453The implications of Napoleon's activities was a destructive war which ended with a few social changes being made and some shifts in political powers. In contrast the introduction of interchangeable parts made it possible and practical to cheaply mass produce complex machines. There were some complicated machinery beforehand, but these were rare and could only be made slowly by the most skilled artisans. This had widespread consequences in every walk of life. Think of almost anything in your life more mechanically complicated than a flintlock musket, the reason you have that is because of assembly line production, powered machine tools and interchangeable parts.

>>273877Wrong: a person who was in the right place at the right time applied existing knowledge in a new way and/or refined existing methods which are in turn further refined. Screw presses and engraved text existed before Gutenberg.

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